A directional light beam with small divergent angle or a parallel light beam such as laser beam can theoretically maintain its original energy level indefinitely, no matter how far it travels from the source. Parallel beams also can be efficiently focused into a point with lens or mirrors. Therefore, a parallel light beam is desirable for use in many optical systems since it is easily manipulated by optical components such as lens or mirrors.
It is difficult to efficiently convert all of light into a parallel beam by using conventional optical components such as lens or mirrors when a light source has finite size and light beam emitted with finite angle range. Optical lens or mirrors can only partially convert light beam emitted from light source with finite size into a parallel beam when the light source is located at their focus points.
There are enormous efforts to obtain a parallel beam from light source with a finite size such as lamps. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,613,768, two arrayed mirrors were used to generate parallel light. Non-parallel lights from light source were blocked by plurality of holes. Thus, part of light energy was wasted and collection of lights is not efficient.
Present invention discloses a technique which can efficiently convert divergent light beams from light source with finite size into a directional light beam with small divergent angle or parallel light beam.
There are number of applications for the invented directional beam generator. The brightness of light can be greatly increased when the given light are coupled into smaller area from large area by employing invented directional beam generators; It can be used as a beam shaper for diode laser coupling to fiber with small core size; It can be used generate point light sources from lamps with finite size for projector; A white “laser”—a directional visible light beam can be generated using the invented directional beam generator.